Barbara Taylor Bradford was a prolific author whose debut book A Woman Of Substance is one of the best-selling novels of all time, having sold more than 30 million copies since its publication in 1979.
The writer, who died on Sunday at the age of 91, wrote 40 novels, all of which became best-sellers. Her last book, The Wonder Of It All, was published in November last year.
Her books have sold more than 91 million copies and have been published in more than 40 languages and in 90 countries.
A Woman Of Substance, the story of a woman who launches her own retail empire after starting out as a maid, was part of her Emma Harte Saga, which spawned eight books, concluding with 2021’s A Man Of Honour.
The saga was adapted for a three-part TV mini-series for Channel 4 in 1985, starring Liam Neeson with Jenny Seagrove as Emma Harte, and received two Emmy nominations.
A Man Of Honour was a prequel to her debut, which starts five years before the original and follows the fortunes of Blackie O’Neill, who leaves Co Kerry for Leeds to build a better life, and meets kitchen maid Emma.
Other series include The Ravenscar Trilogy (2006 to 2008), The Cavendon Chronicles (2014 to 2017) and The House Of Falconer (2018 to 2023), and standalone novels such as Love In Another Town (1995).
As many as 10 of her novels were adapted for TV, some produced by her husband, Robert E Bradford.
Born in Leeds in 1933, her father, Winston Taylor, was an engineer who had lost a leg in the First World War.
As a child during the Second World war she held a jumble sale at her nursery school, where a fellow pupil was author Alan Bennett, and donated the £2 proceeds to the Aid to Russia fund.
She received a letter from Clementine Churchill, the wife of then-prime minister Winston Churchill.
Her older brother, Vivian, died of meningitis before she was born, and she described her mother, Freda Taylor, in an interview with the Guardian as having “put all her frustrated love into me”.
She later fictionalised her parents’ marriage in the 1986 book An Act Of Will.
Taylor Bradford’s writing career began at the age of 15, as a typist, and later a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post. She moved to London, where she eventually became the fashion editor of Woman’s Own magazine and a columnist for the London Evening News.
While working at the paper she met a fellow journalist whom she described as “lanky and dishevelled with acne” and said he kept trying to talk to her even after she turned him down for a date at the cinema – it was actor Peter O’Toole.
She told the Guardian in 2021: “Years later, (Evening Post editor) Keith Waterhouse and I were at an event where the producer Sam Spiegel introduced the star of his new movie.
“Out walked the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, dressed as Lawrence of Arabia. Keith said ‘Don’t you wish you’d gone to the pictures with him now?’. I never got over Peter’s transformation.”
She went on to write an interior decoration column syndicated to 183 newspapers, and returned to the subject later in her career for a number of non-fiction books.
These included Bradford’s Living Romantically Every Day, Etiquette To Please Him and A Garland Of Children’s Verse.
In 1961 she met film and television producer Bradford on a blind date, and they were married in London on Christmas Eve 1963, and moved to New York in 1964. They remained together for 55 years until he died, after a stroke, in July 2019.
After starting and ditching several attempts at a novel, she hit the big time at the age of 46 when A Woman Of Substance was published, making her an overnight success.
In 2021 she denied rumours that she heated a lake at her former Connecticut home in order to keep the swans warm, telling the Guardian: “I didn’t.
“The previous owners did it to stop the swans freezing to death in winter. A good reason.”
Taylor Bradford was made an OBE as part of the Queen’s 2007 birthday honours, for her services to literature, and has received honorary doctorates from Leeds University, the University of Bradford, Mount St Mary’s College, Sienna College and Post University.
Her original manuscripts are archived in Leeds University’s Brotherton Library, beside those of the Bronte sisters, whose books Taylor Bradford read as a child.
In 2017 she was recognised as one of 90 Great Britons to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s 90th birthday.
Taylor Bradford also published three Christian books – Children’s Stories Of Jesus From The New Testament, Children’s Stories Of The Bible From The Old Testament, and Children’s Stories Of The Bible From The Old And New Testaments.
In 2014, the writer became an ambassador for the National Literacy Trust, an independent UK charity that aims to transform lives through literacy.
A spokeswoman for Taylor Bradford announced her death on Monday, saying she died at home after a short illness, and that, after a private funeral in New York, she would be buried alongside her husband at the city’s Westchester Hills Cemetery.
